Born 6 April 1863 at Spilsby, Lincolnshire, the eldest son of the Rev Charles George Ridley, who came from Kimbolton, and Mary Vine, his wife. He was educated at Boston Grammar School and at St Mary's Hospital, where he gained scholarships in natural science and pathology. He acted subsequently as house surgeon, ophthalmic house surgeon, and senior clinical assistant in the ophthalmic department, and was for a time assistant demonstrator of physiology in the Medical School. In 1886 he was placed in the honours list at the intermediate MB examination at the University of London, and to improve his knowledge of diseases of the eye acted as chief clinical assistant at the Royal London (Moorfields) Ophthalmic Hospital. In 1889 he passed into the medical service of the Royal Navy and served until 1892, when he was invalided out for ankylosis of the right knee following a pyogenic infection after fever contracted in the tropics. He settled in practice in Leicester in 1895, and was later in partnership with Maurice Holdsworth Barton, MC, FRCS Ed, MRCS, the two partners specializing in ophthalmology. Ridley was appointed ophthalmic surgeon to the Leicester Royal Infirmary on 12 May 1896, becoming consulting ophthalmic surgeon on 1 May 1923, and was also ophthalmic surgeon to the Blind Institution and Infant Orphan Asylum at Leicester. He was president of the Midland Ophthalmological Society and was Middlemore lecturer in 1923. He married Margaret Parker on 9 July1905. She survived him with two sons, Nicholas Harold Lloyd Ridley, FRCS and Nicolaus Charles Alder Ridley, barrister-at-law, serving in the Colonial Service, Northern Rhodesia. He died on 8 July 1937 at 27 Horsefair Street, Leicester. Publication: Notes and specimens of a case of intraorbital neoplasm. *Brit J Ophthal* 1923, 7, 545.